The Worst Nightmare
by epalladino
Summary: Story complete: Frank is very worried as Joe has problems dealing with the approach of the first anniversary of Iola's death. Please read and review.


**Author's notes: **This will not be my first fanfic, but it will be the first one based on the Hardy Boys. In a way it is inspired by another, unfinished, Hardy Boys fic that I read on another site. What I am writing here is basically unrelated to this other fic, but it popped into my head when my mind and heart wanted a conclusion to the unfinished fic I just read.

It's been a long time since I've read any Hardy Boys stories, but I've recently been indulging in reading a whole bevy of excellent Hardy Boys fanfic offerings on this site and others and decided to drop a little contribution into the till. I apologize ahead of time for any inaccuracies, lapses of memory, or inadvertent borrowings from the excellent fanfics of others.

**Disclaimer and warning: **Of course these characters don't belong to me; I am merely borrowing them for a while. I did not want to put an 'R' rating on this, but it is going to be pretty angsty and will be bringing up mature themes of grief and suicide. However, the story may go to unexpected places; don't believe everything you read here.

**The Worst Nightmare** by Beth Palladino

Seventeen-year-old Joe Hardy was having a lot of trouble falling asleep that evening. The blond-haired, blue-eyed youth tossed and turned until he finally fell asleep. Unfortunately, he had only been asleep for a few minutes when he screamed out and with a crash fell out of the bed.

He had just managed to sit up on the floor, rubbing his head where he had hit it against his nightstand, when his year-older brother rushed into the room, coming through the shared bathroom that connected their two bedrooms.

Frank, whose eyes and hair were as dark as his younger brother's were light, quickly stepped over to where Joe was still sitting on the floor looking somewhat dazed and knelt down next to him.

"Joe, are you okay?" Frank whispered, not wanting to wake his parents unless necessary. When Joe managed to nod, Frank stood up again and gently assisted his brother up from the floor to sit on the bed. He looked deep into the once-bright blue eyes and sighed. He did not like what he saw in Joe's eyes, but at least he saw no signs that the bump on the head was anything major.

Frank sat on the bed next to Joe, carefully rubbing the sore spot on Joe's blond head, and was pleased to find that there wasn't even much of a lump growing.

"Nightmares again, little brother?" He inquired quietly.

Joe, not trusting the steadiness of his voice as he attempted to lie, just shook his head. He pulled away from Frank's arm, which had now settled down around his shoulders.

"Look, Frank," Joe eventually said, "You know I stopped having those nightmares months ago. I just turned the wrong way in my sleep and fell out of bed. That's all there is to say. Now go back to bed; we both need to get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a big day." Joe lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes.

This was something that Frank had been afraid of. It was true that Joe had stopped having nightmares over the death in a car bombing of his one-true-love, Iola Morton. But in Frank's opinion Joe was far from over the grief and guilt that came from her death. And Frank had been more recently concerned over Joe's apparent calm over the Bayport High School's decision to have a program to mark the first anniversary of Iola's death; the special program they were having tomorrow evening after school was over.

Joe, as he lay there with his eyes closed but still wide-awake, knew that Frank knew that he was lying. But it was just too hard to admit the truth; to admit that Iola's death, even after a year, was just too painful to think about.

Frank brushed his brother's hair back from his damp forehead and then returned to his own bed. He lay awake for a long time listening for anything out of the ordinary coming from his brother's room, but eventually fell back to sleep.

Joe continued lying there willing himself to go back to sleep; hopefully a sleep without dreams or nightmares. But he was unable. He just couldn't forget that horrible day at the shopping mall; couldn't forget the argument that he had had with Iola; couldn't forget her grabbing his car keys away from him and returning to his car in the parking lot, getting in without him—and then watching helplessly as that car went up in a ball of fire.

It was an explosion intended for him, the younger son of a famous private detective, and, along with his brother, famous himself as an amateur detective. And Joe could never, ever forgive himself for driving Iola away from him into that death. He was the one that should be dead—not that young, innocent girl.

Realizing that no more sleep would come to him that night, Joe got up from his bed and dressed in t-shirt, jeans, socks, and athletic shoes—all in black. He crept out through his bedroom door into the hallway beyond. He listened for a while to see if his parents, Fenton and Laura Hardy, and his brother, Frank, were still sleeping. He then quietly made his way downstairs.

He eventually went through a swinging door into the kitchen and made for himself, of all things, a cup of tea. He wasn't quite sure why he did that; he didn't particularly care for tea or coffee usually preferring hot chocolate.

But Iola had liked tea and maybe that was what had made Joe desire it now. As he sat down at the table with the large mug of tea he had prepared, he decided to just drink it 'straight'—no milk or sugar for him. Iola had always put milk and sugar in her tea, but Joe found that he liked tea a lot better as long as he drank it plain.

A combination of the soothing feeling he got from the hot tea along with the exhaustion of not sleeping well since he had found out about this memorial program for Iola made Joe's eyes suddenly feel very heavy. He decided to lay his head down on the kitchen table for just a second and close his eyes. He had no idea that in his desperate quest for peace from nightmares, he would suffer the worst nightmare of them all.

* * *

_The first light of a new day started to creep in through the kitchen window when Joe sat up all of a sudden and looked at the time on the kitchen clock. It was almost 5:00am. He had been asleep at the table for almost four hours. _

_What was left of the tea in the mug was almost stone cold. Rather than appealing and soothing, as it had seemed when it was hot, it now seemed nauseatingly disgusting. Joe got up from the table and threw the rest of the tea down the drain of the kitchen sink and left the dirty mug on the counter._

_He just could not abide the idea of returning upstairs to his bedroom; there really wasn't that many hours left before he had to leave for school, anyway. He could get Frank to retrieve his schoolbooks for him and the attire he was now wearing would not be inappropriate for during the day; he could always come home after school was over and change into a more proper suit of clothing before the memorial program for Iola was to commence. _

_At the thought of this program, he collapsed back into a chair at the table and put his head in his hands. For the first time in several months he again wept bitterly over the death of the beautiful girl that had been the only one for him. _

_Everyone had thought that Joe was getting over Iola's death as the nightmares faded and the continual miasma of grief that seemed to constantly envelop Joe had eased. But Joe had merely replaced grief with numbness. _

_Everyone seemed not to want to notice that his seeming calm was just the calm before the storm. _

_Joe looked upon his life as having ended the day that Iola died—as having become nothing more than one continual nightmare. He knew it was only a matter of time before he followed his love into that death, one way or another. _

_Joe was weary of crying and weary of hurting. There was only one other person that Joe knew who understood much of what was going on with him, even if he did not completely know how to help: his brother, Frank._

_But as much as Joe loved Frank and knew that Frank loved him, Joe was weary of feeling that he was nothing but a huge burden; a burden that his poor brother did not even know how to lift—no matter how willing he was to try._

_If there was one thing that everyone did know about Joe, it was that once he made up his mind to do something that was what he would do regardless of the consequences and often regardless of the feelings of others. _

_It was that very stubbornness of his that had caused the final argument with Iola; and, as the light of a new day grew in the kitchen where he was now seated, it was that very same stubbornness that made him determined to refuse to see even one more day without Iola._

_Having come to a decision, a great feeling of relief passed over Joe. He just knew that this would be the best thing for everyone. He would finally have peace of mind and his friends and family would once and for all be rid of the worry and burden that his life had become for them._

_He got up from the table. Opening one of the kitchen cabinets, he located a bottle that contained some sleeping pills that he had been prescribed right after Iola died. It was still half full. _

_He rinsed out the mug that he had left on the counter, refilled it with water, and emptied all of the pills into his hand. Taking the pills and the mug of water, he returned to his seat at the table. _

_Joe stood next to the kitchen table and looked down at the blond-haired youth collapsed across it. He went back upstairs. He looked into the messiness that comprised his own bedroom and then passing through the connecting bathroom looked into the neat perfection that comprised his brother Frank's room._

_Joe walked over to Frank, who was still sleeping, bent over and whispered into his ear, "Sorry to leave you like this, but everything will be better for everyone this way. You'll see." Frank tossed and groaned in his sleep. He opened his eyes and sat up, not understanding what had wakened him._

_Joe watched Frank get up from his bed, pass through the bathroom and look into his younger brother's room to check on him. He watched Frank eventually make his way downstairs when he realized that Joe was no longer upstairs and watched as he walked into the brightly lit kitchen through the swinging door. _

_Joe smiled to himself; he knew what he was doing was just so right. He closed his eyes and waited for the peace of oblivion. The last thing Joe heard and felt, as if from a great distance, was Frank calling his name over and over as he shook his precious baby brother's lifeless body. Then the darkness took Joe._

_But rather than finding that peace he so desperately needed, Joe wandered in a dark, cold fog for a very long time. He could hear familiar voices, some distant, some very close by. He could not quite make out what the voices were saying, but he could hear that all of these voices were filled with grief._

_He eventually broke through into a place of beautiful light and there standing before him, in a verdantly green meadow, was Iola. She was even more radiantly beautiful than his memories of her. As he ran to her and once more enveloped her in his arms, he was certain that he had done the right thing._

_Joe leaned in for the tender kiss that he had been longing for. But the kiss was not exactly as Joe thought it would be. Iola eventually broke it off and, with tears in her eyes, gently pushed him away from her._

"_I'm sorry, Joe," she whispered in a broken voice, "You are no longer the compassionate and generous boy that I loved with all my heart and left behind with such regret; that boy would never have so hurt the people who loved him as you have done."_

"_Iola, come back!" Joe cried as she turned and walked away from him, "I only wanted us to be together again. Believe me, the people who love me are better off with me gone."_

_To Joe's relief Iola turned back, took his hand, and gazed into his face in that lovingly exasperated way that she always had when forgiving him for one of his many stupidities. She smiled sadly, "Maybe you're right, Joe. Maybe you haven't really changed all that much; so often rushing headfirst into wrong actions for all of the right reasons." _

_Iola pulled Joe closer and tenderly kissed him on the cheek, but pulled away when he tried to embrace her again._

"_Joe, please come with me. I want to show you something." Joe followed her without question, vowing in his heart to never again refuse anything that Iola wanted from him—to never again do as he had done on that terrible day, the day that his stubborn anger had pushed Iola away from him for all eternity._

_As they walked together hand-in-hand, the peaceful, sunny meadow became a dark, snow-covered cemetery, obviously decorated for Christmas. _

_Iola led Joe up to a tombstone that had **Hardy** carved in large blocky letters on the top and had three separate names carved into the bottom: **Fenton, Joseph, Laura**, all to Joe's shock having the exact same date of death. _

_There was a man, brown hair flecked with gray, kneeling silently in the snow before this tomb. Joe wanted to rush forward to embrace him; the man looked so much like an older version of his father, Fenton Hardy. _

_Iola's voice whispered, "Tell me, Joe, what is better about this?" When Joe turned to look at her, she was gone._

_He turned back and moved closer to the kneeling man, who was starting to weep inconsolably. With a lurch of his heart, Joe recognized him as his brother, Frank; no longer the eighteen-year-old youth with the gentle brown eyes who had so often been Joe's pillar of strength, but a man aged before his time by pain and trouble. _

_Joe threw himself down on his knees next to Frank and tried to take him into his arms, but it was like trying to embrace fog. Joe gradually became aware that it was he himself who now lacked substance and not the distraught man kneeling before him in the freezing snow. He also came to realize that Frank could not see him or hear him._

_This much older version of Frank eventually took a deep breath and stopped weeping, but stayed on his knees, head bowed down. Joe, now destined to remain forever young, continued kneeling beside his grief-stricken brother._

_After a long time of keeping silent vigil, Frank leaned forward and touched each of the names on the tombstone in turn, ending with his brother's name last. As he spoke in a voice thick with still unshed tears, he kept his hand there._

"_Joe, can you believe it's been twenty years since I found you that morning in the kitchen? God, sometimes it seems like twenty centuries and sometimes like it was just yesterday."_

_Joe leaned forward and looked closer at Frank. His brother was now a man in his late 30's, but to Joe's eyes Frank looked at least a decade older than that._

_Frank dropped his outstretched hand and sat back on his heels in the snow, totally oblivious to how wet he was becoming. "I never realized until that very moment that I could be one of those people who becomes selfish in their grief. I can't believe that I got dressed and ran out of the house that morning and left Mom to find your body in the kitchen when she came down later to make breakfast."_

_Frank sighed and stood up, brushing away the snow that now encrusted the lower part of his pants. Joe moved to stand directly in front of Frank and he could swear that his brother could see him now. _

"_You know, Joe, that was the worst mistake I ever made. I turned my back on Mom and Dad when they needed me the most because I could not deal with my own grief. They say that suicide is contagious, but I never understood how true that really was until that day. Because of my own selfish reaction to your death I lost my entire family the day that I lost you."_

_Frank moved closer to Joe and looked him directly in the eye. "You want to know why I didn't kill myself that day, too? At first, I was just too overwhelmed for it all to sink in. There was a part of me that just refused to believe that it had all really happened. I collapsed at the funeral and had to be put into a hospital for a very long time. But one day I came to a decision: the death and pain had to stop somewhere and it was going to stop with me. I came out of that hospital and slowly, but surely built myself a brand new life. I certainly can't claim that it has been easy; it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do—the grief never completely goes away. But I have learned to take my great pain and turn it into a kind of power. Yet every once in a while I am driven back to this cemetery again and at those times the grief is just as fresh as it was twenty years ago."_

_Frank suddenly smiled, "In the past I've usually seen Mom and Dad when I've come around and am a bit surprised that they are nowhere to be found tonight. But for some strange reason I feel like they've finally found a way to move on and I'm happy for them. The very best thing is being able to see you, Joe. This is the first time you've ever appeared to me and I almost feel a kind of hope in my heart again; a hope that has been dead for a long time. I almost feel that something better is going to come for all of us."_

_Frank reached into a pocket and brought out his wallet. He opened it and brought out a photograph of two boys: one as dark-haired and dark-eyed as the other was fair. "I got married eight years ago and Janice is one of the best things that ever happened to me. These are our two boys: Frankie's seven and Joey's six. Through them I feel like I've been given a second chance and I'm determined not to mess it up this time."_

_Frank put the picture back into his wallet. "I'm sorry, Joe, but I've got to go now. It's time for me to go and play Santa for the boys. I'm sorry that they will never get a chance to know their grandparents or their uncle, but I have learned that life goes on and I'm not sorry that I went with life instead of staying with death. Goodbye, Joe. Maybe we will see each other here again sometime."_

_To Joe's dismay Frank turned and quickly walked away from the grave of his parents and brother and made his way toward the exit. Joe stood frozen in place for a few seconds and then tried to run after Frank, but he found it more and more difficult the further he got away from the grave where his body was buried._

_Joe, finally stopping in exhaustion, fell to his knees. And as the cold, foggy darkness took him again he fell face forward into the freezing, wet snow._

* * *

As awareness slowly came back to Joe, he found that he felt very cold and stiff. He eventually sat up and came to realize that he was still seated at the kitchen table, the now cold mug of tea still at his elbow. He looked at the time on the kitchen clock and it showed it to be almost 2:00am.

Joe dropped his head into his hands; it had all been a dream—a bizarre, frightening, hideous, wonderful dream. He stood up from the table, went to the kitchen cabinet and found that very bottle of sleeping pills that had appeared in his dream. He stood with the bottle of pills in his hand, just looking at it.

Upstairs, Frank tossed and groaned in his sleep. He opened his eyes and sat up, not understanding what had wakened him. He got out from his bed, passed through the connecting bathroom, and discovered that his brother was no longer in his bedroom. Frank had been very concerned about his younger brother ever since he had fallen out of bed earlier and thought it might be a good idea to look for him. Upon determining that Joe was no longer upstairs, Frank made his way downstairs and came to notice that a light was on in the kitchen.

As Frank pushed his way through the swinging door, he saw Joe standing at the kitchen sink contemplating what looked to be a bottle of pills. Frank halted as his heart suddenly skipped a beat and then he moved forward again.

"Joe, what are you thinking about doing with those pills?"

As Joe looked up at him, Frank could see that he had been crying. "Not what you think I'm going to do with them, big brother. That's for sure."

Joe popped the lid off the bottle and shook the pills out into his hand, "You know, Iola was right; there's no way in hell I'm going to do anything that would hurt the people who love me. I've decided I'm going to go with life and forget about death. Someone wise reminded me that the death and pain had to stop somewhere. I know now that's what Iola would want and I promised her just now that I would never refuse her anything that she wanted from me."

Joe dumped the pills that he had been holding into the sink and turning on the water rinsed them all down the drain.

Frank, who had been holding back because he had not been sure what mood Joe was in and didn't want to make things worse, reached out and pulled his precious baby brother into his arms and held him close. Joe, who in the recent past would have immediately tried to pull away from any such embrace, threw his arms around Frank and burying his face in his older brother's shoulder started to cry in a way that he hadn't cried in months; and it felt good, really, really good to let it all out.

Joe eventually pulled away from Frank and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. "God, Frank, I never seem to have a Kleenex when I need one."

Frank went to find his baby brother a Kleenex. After Joe blew his nose and wiped his eyes, Frank looked closely at him and was pleased with the newly regained brightness in his brother's blue eyes.

"Joe, is there anything else that you need before we go back to bed?"

"Yeah, a good pot of hot chocolate would be nice. I don't think I like tea all that much. Gives me nightmares."

Joe sat down again at the kitchen table and watched as Frank happily bustled around making a pot of hot chocolate. Just as the milk was coming to a boil and Frank was digging the bottle of Hershey syrup from the refrigerator, the swinging door to the kitchen opened and Fenton and Laura Hardy walked in to check out what was going on.

Ten minutes later all four of them were seated at the table drinking mugs of hot chocolate.

As Joe took his first sip from the steaming mug that Frank had set down in front of him and tasted its warm, chocolaty sweetness, he knew that for the first time in months he was really and truly contented. He knew that it would still take all of his strength to get through the day tomorrow and to get through the memorial program in the evening. He also knew that the days, weeks, and months to come would not at all be easy.

But as Joe looked around the table at his family, the family that he loved more than anything else in the world and he knew loved him with the same depth of feeling, he was reminded he would never have to get through this alone.

"Thanks, Iola," Joe whispered into his mug of hot chocolate, "Once again, you really knew how to set me straight."


End file.
